The Punishment of Gaza, by Gideon Levy. Verso, 2010, 146 pages.
By David Strom
SAN DIEGO–When going to Hebrew school, I often wondered why people didn’t pay too much attention to the Prophets in the Torah. Why didn’t the leaders of the day follow what these wise men were saying? As a young school student, it seemed so obvious that the Prophets spoke the truth. Couldn’t the leaders recognize the obvious truth of the Prophets when I, just a young student, could understand and see what they were saying made perfectly good sense to most of us in our Hebrew school class.
It is only recently that I began to understand the difficulty of any prophet in history. They live “in their times,” yet speak of a “different” and hopefully better time. A prophet must challenge the leaders or “misleaders” of their government and media. They are often hated by many and heard by few. Yet they persist in speaking with a prophetic voice. Why? They must. They feel the need to guide and inspire future generations to reach a higher goal for all humanity. They speak truth to power, they hope to bring out the good that resides in all of us, and urge all to positive action against the existing dominant negative power.
Gideon Levy is a prominent award-winning Israeli writer. He is a thorn in the Israeli government’s flank, who for twenty years has caustically written about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He spent many years covering the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His latest book, The Punishment of Gaza, is, in some ways a prophetic work.
When the Israelis unilaterally left the Gaza, Levy and other Palestinian, Israeli and American peaceniks thought that this would free the Palestinians in Gaza. But it didn’t. Soon after the euphoria following the withdrawal settled down, the Israeli occupier returned and settled in. “The occupation did not end. On the contrary, it is more cruel, criminal and inhuman today than ever before…. The jailer pulled out of the jail and was now holding its prisoners captive from without. Yes, Gaza was and still is the largest prison on earth, a gruesome experiment performed on human beings.”
Gideon Levy went back many times to Gaza. As he describes it, “On one occasion a reporter from French television’s TF1 channel joined us. In a doorway in Rafah (or was it Khan Younis?) where a paralyzed Palestinian mother lost her only child to an Israeli missile, I said to this French colleague, ‘ This is when I am ashamed to be Israeli. This horrible missile was launched in my name too.’ “ The following day he called me: “We won’t be able to broadcast your last remark. It is too extreme. Our audience may take offense.”
Levy was deeply distressed over the broadcaster’s response to his words. “That is precisely what I have been trying to elicit all these years: outrage, outrage and offense at what Israel is making a million and a half helpless immiserated people living in the Strip endure. To the best of my meager abilities, I am asking all Israelis to be outraged—or at least understand what is being perpetrated in their name, so that they may never have the right to claim: We did not know. We didn’t know that the Israeli occupation was so devastating, so brutal; we didn’t this horror was going on.”
At another time writing in Haaretz, Levy tackles the difficult notion of: Who started it? “They started it” is the routine response to anyone who tries to argue, for example, “…that a few hours before the first Qassam fell on the school in Ashkelon, causing no damage, Israel sowed destruction at the Islamic University in Gaza.”
“Israel is causing electricity blackouts; laying sieges; bombing and shelling; assassinating and imprisoning; killing and wounding civilians, including children and babies in horrifying numbers-but ‘they started it.’ ” But when the Gazans fire a Qassam, that is called an escalation of the conflict. Gideon Levy argues, “When we bomb a university and a school, it’s perfectly all right. Why? Because they started it… all the justice is on our side.” It seems that the winning argument that they started it, justifies every injustice that the occupier imposes. But to the disquiet of a Gideon Levy it is very clear on who started it. “We (in the original) started it. We started it with the occupation, and we are duty-bound to end it-a real and complete ending. We started the violence. There is no violence worse than the violence of the occupier, using force on an entire nation, so the question about who fired first is therefore an evasion meant to distort the picture.”
The state of Israel was founded to bring justice for Jews, and to shine that light of justice onto the rest of the world. And it did so through the kibbutz movement-where economic justice for all was achieved. When a nation acquires land though war, rules it despotically, justice cannot be achieved. It results in injustice for the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, and conquers the heart and soul of the occupier. They become immune to justice and rule dictatorially. To be fair, Israel is not blameless. And the Palestinians are clearly not the aggressors.
After reading Levy’s The Punishment of Gaza it is clear why the Biblical Prophets’ messages “fell upon deaf ears.” Why does anyone want to leave his or her zone of comfort? They don’t. And most of the time, I don’t. The easy route is to blame the victim and constantly repeat the mantra, “they started it.” Or another popular mantra, “there is no one to talk to on the other side.” When democratic elections were held in Gaza and Hamas got the majority of the votes, the Israeli government chose not to recognize the legitimate winners. Why? Did this decision help the cause of peace? Or, did it damage the road to peaceful coexistence? The oppressor never gives freedom; it is taken by the oppressed.
Israel has Gideon Levy, who religiously speaks truth to power like a prophet of old. Because he writes in the most popular daily newspaper in Israel, it is difficult for many Israelis to say they haven’t seen or heard his voice. He is asking his readership to pursue justice-“justice, justice you shall pursue.”
Is there an American Gideon Levy? Do we have a prophet or two speaking regularly in our media about our wars of aggression and telling us we are wrong? As an American prophet Dr. King said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Where is the prophetic voice urging us to feed, clothe and house the needy in this land of plenty? Where is that voice of compassion influencing us to have concern and consideration for the illegal/legal immigrant? Where are the still small voices that demand jobs, jobs, and livable wage jobs for all? If they exist, where are they? We certainly need to hear from them, and now.
Or are our prophets’ today the shrill and negative voices we hear so often just the voices of gloom and doom? From Sarah Palin-the map marksmen- to Glenn Beck-the self deceptive historian- upwards or is it mainly downward that they give off such “unholy words” of pseudo-wisdom or of drawn maps with targets on them?
The Punishment of Gaza is an enlightening look through the eyes of a perceptive and compassionate advocate for lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Gideon Levy makes it difficult for the Jewish reader or peacenik to walk away from the raging struggle for justice in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Dr. King said, “The question is not whether we will become extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the entire world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
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Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University
Prof. Strom writes, “To be fair, Israel is not blameless. And the Palestinians are clearly not the aggressors.”
Yet he is in no way fair, and he lays blame SOLELY on Israel, for every sorrow the people of Gaza suffer. It is utterly unconscionable to ignore the historical willingness of Israel to make the most painful concessions – diplomatically and geographically, politically and otherwise – in the pursuit of peace. It is morally repugnant to ignore the long and bloody history of Palestinian terrorism and Arab aggression toward Israel (before, during, and after the occupation) while blaming Israel for all the violence.
This is a shameful piece of writing, filled with inaccuracies and sins of omission, made all the worse by the irony that, had it been written by a Palestinian critical of the Hamas regime in Gaza, it would have resulted in retaliation far more severe than a scathing comment on the Internet.